Adverse Childhood Experiences in the Lives of Female Sex Offenders

Abstract

This study explored the prevalence of early trauma in a sample of U.S. female sexual offenders (N = 47) using the Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE) scale. Compared with females in the general population, sex offenders had more than three times the odds of child sexual abuse, four times the odds of verbal abuse, and more than three times the odds of emotional neglect and having an incarcerated family member. Half of the female sex offenders had been sexually abused as a child. Only 20% endorsed zero adverse childhood experiences (compared with 35% of the general female population) and 41% endorsed four or more (compared with 15% of the general female population). Higher ACE scores were associated with having younger victims. Multiple maltreatments often co-occurred in households with other types of dysfunction, suggesting that many female sex offenders were raised within a disordered social environment by adults with problems of their own who were ill-equipped to protect their daughters from harm. By enhancing our understanding of the frequency and correlates of early adverse experiences, we can better devise trauma-informed interventions that respond to the clinical needs of female sex offender clients.

Adverse Childhood Experiences, Commitment Offense, and Race/Ethnicity: Are the Effects Crime-, Race-, and Ethnicity-Specific?

“…Adverse childhood experiences have been shown to have long-term effects on behavioral functioning and have recently been utilized by criminologists as a conceptual framework to understand antisocial development [6,12,13,14,15,16,17,18,19,20]. Using a large sample of 2520 serious male juvenile delinquents, the current study examined whether there were differential effects on crime based on the number of adverse childhood experiences that a ward experienced, whether these effects varied across race and ethnic groups, and whether the adverse childhood experiences’ association with offending depended on the commitment offense type.…”

“…Additional research is needed to examine how and to what degree adverse childhood experiences are associated with variance in specific forms of serious crime, including homicide and aggravated robbery. Moreover, while there is considerable evidence that sexual abuse victimization can be a distal predictor of subsequent sexual offending [17,18,19,20,21], much less is known about how poverty, physical abuse, emotional abuse, and other deprivations are linked to other forms of violence.…”

“…It is possible that frequency and severity vary by subgroup and the resultant error from this omission contributes to the discrepant findings. Additional study of adverse childhood experiences and specific forms of crime could also inform the understanding of criminal specialization to the degree that a specific form of abuse is associated with subsequent offending, as in the case of sexual abuse/sexual assault [17,18,19,20]. …”

“…For instance, Boduszek and colleagues [15] found that male prisoners in Poland who had been exposed to family violence were approximately six times more likely to perpetrate a homicide than offenders who lacked violence exposure. In terms of sexual violence, a host of investigators have found that assorted adverse childhood experiences, particularly childhood sexual abuse victimization, were associated with an increased likelihood of perpetrating sexual crimes during adolescence or adulthood [16,17,18,19,20,21]. The evidence is clear that adverse childhood experiences increase the liability for externalizing symptoms and diverse forms of antisocial conduct.…”

You Learn What You Live: Prevalence of Childhood Adversity in the Lives of Juveniles Arrested for Sexual Offenses

“…Both male and female adult sexual offenders report childhood trauma at rates greater than the general population (Levenson, Willis, & Prescott, 2015, with male sexual offenders (N = 679) three times more likely to report child sexual abuse (CSA), twice as likely to report physical abuse, thirteen times more likely to have been verbally abused, and four times more likely to experience emotional neglect or having unmarried parents. Among adult sexual offenders, ACE scores were associated with persistence and versatility in arrest patterns, increased sexual violence and sexual deviance, and substance abuse disorders (Levenson, 2015;Levenson & Socia, 2015).…”